Vista del valle del Elba

By 1807 Caspar David Friedrich had spent years working almost entirely in pencil and ink wash, and he was only now beginning to paint in oil. This valley view belongs to that turn, when a careful draftsman was learning what colour and atmosphere could do. He had settled in Dresden, on the Elbe, and the river and the low hills around it fed his work for the rest of his life. The mood here is quieter than the stark, lonely scenes that later made his name. What carries over is the close attention to light and distance, the sense that the land rewards slow looking. The next year he would finish the altar-like Cross in the Mountains, the picture that first set critics arguing about him.